THE CAT’S PAWS

BACKDROP AND PREAMBLE:

In the early part of the 90’s, I was a too-young honcho at a big salt plant here.  Like all young and newly empowered managers in humongous organizations, I first got brutalized by the older (and one or two level up) and more vicious killers (that mostly suffered from the ‘miniscule male member’ syndrome).  An example was a punishingly low-IQ egomaniac sales manager up north at the Chicago headquarters.  He  wasted no time in pinning my ears back. I provide all of this to reveal the backdrop of my life at the time of this story; this was where my mind was when the story below occurs. (more…)

Last summer, my then-17-year-old son needed a car.  For me to ‘loan’ him anymore money to repair/restore his (hormonally) destroyed Acura was folly.  In the County of St Louis, where bus service is deplorable and auto transportation essential for productively working (and not  bleeding a dad), I hooked him up with a car. (more…)

Few if any Americans knew much about Sudan until quite recently.  The sprawling nation of northeastern Africa (adjacent to Ethiopia and Tanzania) seriously dried up by a horrific drought for the first part of the 1980’s.  As always in a country, African or elsewhere, suffering abject poverty plus now a killing natural force that quite literally baked her livestock and their water ponds. Christian conversion/dogma,Islam’s rudimentary entitlements from Allah, and pagan witchcraft all proved woefully useless in stopping the sun’s scorching incineration of all things living.  Sudan’s inhabitants predictably in such circumstances, very nearly all of them, embroiled themselves in killing each other. (more…)

Numerology is a lot bigger in Europe than in the U.S.  It doesn’t appear in newspapers as the fake and superficial ‘how your day will be’ crap feature as the late Jeanne Dixon’s syndicated “Astrology” column did. Numerology goes back significantly further than astrology, or than any other metaphisical study. (more…)

1867’s pretty old for a church in my town, or any town in this longitude.  A wealthy man named Richard Lockwood rode his cart, family in tow, to the church he built in Webster.  His farm, though, was considerably far of a commute (to church, anyway) in those days.  Prior to the first services being held, he’d milk his cows, tend the stable, and trot from what’s now McCausland Ave (Dogtown) where he owned at least (and probably more) 100 acres on to the west of the north/south lane that was already dotted with homes that surrounded his home (torn down in 1907) and fields (developed into homes and lots during the ‘04 StL Worlds’ Fair period).  He named his creation Emmanuel Episcopal church, the first of four built in Webster that year, and second overall to ‘The Baptist Church’ down in the Kirkham creek (between Rock Hill and Gore) where slaves and servants came down from the Douglass Manor (N.  Elm) to worship–THAT’s an old church, wooden frame long gone, but at nearly exact same spot, a ‘new’ one now sports ‘01 brick facade.  Few if any white folks here, even a generation ago, know a thing about this, but they’re not asking,  either. (more…)

I got off work today after finishing up stuff down in Marion, IL, and by virtue of where I was coming from and where I needed to go (home to pay a couple more bills, deposit my paycheck, etc) I crossed the I-255 bridge (JB Bridge and her unique pink steel suspension; very cool) and landed back into MO.  (more…)